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SP E EC II 



HON. JUSTIN S. MORRILL, 



OK VKWMOXT, 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



THE ANNEXATION OF HAWAII, 



Monday, Junk 20, iSgS. 



WASHIIMG'rON. 

I89S. 



0S4.87 



SPEECH 

OK 

HON. JUSTIN S. MORIULL 



The Senate bavins niuler consideration the joint icsolutjoii 01- tits. :.'.V.ti to 
provide for annexing the Hawaiian Islands to tho United States- 
Mr. MORRILL said: 

Mr. Presidknt: I shall tre-^pass tipon tho time of tho h-'enate 
only to state why the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands in 
time of war is more inopportnno than in time of i)i'aco, and 
also to state some of the reasons why I am unable to concur 
with the learned Committee on Foreign Relations in regard to 
snch an annexation, whether by treaty, by joint resolution, by 
flagrant Executive usurpation, or in any manner which leaves 
an open door for their admission into tho Union as a State. 

The undesirable character of the greater part of their ill-gathered 
races of population, gathered by contract to long years of semi- 
slavery by sugar employers, does not warrant and never can en- 
title them to an ecjual representation in the Senate of the United 
States with Virginia and Massachusetts, or with Illinois and 
Colorado, nor any otlier State. A new member, as a business 
matter, ought not to be pushed into the Union without the con- 
Bent of all the present members. We can be their friend without 
taking them into our family. 

I do not suppose many Senators here will acknowledge that 
they favor the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands with the idea 
that they can be at once or ever admitted into tho Union as a 
State. Yet they ought to know that by the terms here presented, 
copied as they' have been from the moribund treaty, they are 
to be admitted into some back- door vestibule of the Union 
and may be then admitted as a State at the pleasure of Con- 
gress. A square denial and interdiction of this statehood to-day, 
though embroidered on the breast of a joint resolution or branded 
on the rump of a treaty, will not bind any future Congress against 
admission, but might perhaps induce President Dole to inform 
ns that anything less than as an equal to one of the stars of the 
Union would bo unacceptable to him, and it is easy to predict 
what party would yield. If the islands should be annexed, no 
matter upon what terms, there would soon be here two men 
knocking at our doors for admission as Senators. As candidates, 
they may even now be weary of waiting. 

Whether or not we shall at the very next election have to wait 
until the returns are received from Honolulu to diti-rniine who 
has been elected President of the United States remains to be seen. 

This statehood question was elsewhere recently very jauntily 
disposed of by the suggestion that the islands would probably Ix? 



found some years hence located as a county in one of onr Pacific 
States. Years ago children were sometimes told that if they would 
run out to the end of the rainbow they would find a sack of 
money. Hawaii County will be found in Oregon or California at 
about the same time the sack of money is found at the tail end of 
some rainbow. 

At my timQ<£)f life, having no higher ambition than to be right, 
I greatly regi-et to find that on the question of the annexation of 
the Hawaiian Islands I can not quite agree with some of my as- 
sociates here with whoso opinions I have rarely differed, and 
while knowing how imijossible it is to change the views of any 
Senator, I hope they will pardon my desire to present in open ses- 
sion of the Senate my reasons for opposition to a measure hereto- 
fore alwaj-s rejected by the United States, and, as it appears to me, 
never so much deserving of rejection as now. I am not unwilling 
the record should show, if the consistcncj' of any person or party 
on this (luestion has been broken, that it will not include any 
record of mine. Let mo add that I am, as ever, in favor of holding 
executive sessions of the Senate with closed doors, but not in 
favor of a secret session of the Senate for the admission of a State 
into the Union. Thai is too important to be wholly concealed 
from the people. 

I shall still vote for an increase of the Navy, but I am opposed 
to a policy of annexing distant islands that might create a neces- 
sity for doubling our naval force, and lax'gely expand the cost of 
its maintenance, especially when there are no islands worthy of 
our annexation now unappropriated. 

The annexation of the Hawaiian Islands has never been included 
in any Republican platform. Hawaii was mentioned for the first 
time in the i)latform of 1896, and then merely to declare that " the 
Hawaiian Islands should be controlled by the United States, and 
no foreign power should be permitted to interfere with them," but 
this was only the aflfirmation of the policy the United States has 
maintained for more than one hundred years. 

The Hawaiian annexation scheme hardly belongs to the present 
Administration, nor to the humanitarian war, and the time may 
come when even its present boldest advocates may not be unwill- 
ing to have it more justly known as an untimely seven-months' 
offspring of some previous Administration. 

The Hawaiian Islands in early days having been the place of 
rest and of supplies for our whaling vessels while in pursuit of 
their gigantic game, the American people became interested in 
the race and were recently surprised by what they were willing 
to accept as a sign of an advance in their civilization and politi- 
cal prosperity. Accordingly the peaceful dethronement of their 
Queen seemed a step deserving cheerful acquiescence, although 
her resignation, it can not be denied, appeared to have been a lit- 
tle too abruptly enticed. When the late President of our Repub- 
lic, however, with "paramount" authority, set about the Blount 
restoration of her majesty, even witliout any civil-service exam- 
ination, it was so incongruous with any Democratic or Republican 
ideas that our sympathy for Hawaii became very robust and so 
unduly excited that annexation appeared to some of our hot and 
impressible statesmen aa not an exaggerated reparation of an at- 
tempted great and crovniing wrong. 

One prominent objection to the pending measure is that the 
l>eople of neither Hawaii uor of the United States have been cou- 



sultoil or taken into contidence in relation to the impemlinf? com- 
pact. The promotors have been reluctant to trust the peojile with 
it. The country is to wake up next week and tind a new but un- 
welcome member "incorporated," as Mr. Sherman, the Secretary 
of State, described it, "into the body politic of the United States." 
At Hawaii something: leaked out about it after its final determina- 
tion. Here the Senate was informed about it aftei' tlie Secretary 
had siy:ned the treaty; but even the Senate did not permit itself to 
discuss it excejit in secret session until its jiaucity of votes was 
disclosed; and it came orijjinally in the form of a treaty, not to 
hide the fact that a treaty was not a courageous but a cowardly 
way to bring a State into the Union, as some people thought, but 
for the reason that the Hawaiian promoters of the comjiact could 
fix up their part cf it in that way with less lubrication. The 
authorship of this state paper appears to have been miscellaneous 
and partly unknown, having been cut and dried in Honolulu, and 
yet it was to have been consented to by the United States Senate 
without subtraction or addition, as the committee reporting it 
seem to have regarded it as properly inspired and inerrant. 

The late Secretary of State. .John Sherman, who:.e eminent serv- 
ices will not be forgotten, in his "Recollections'' declares: 

If my life is prdloncred I will do .all I can to add to the stronpth and pros- 
l)ority of the Uniti-d States, but nothini; to extend its limits nor to add uew 
danRers by aoquisitions of foreign territory. 

That was the way he wished his record to stand if his life 
should be prolonged. Can anyone believe, if ho were now in the 
seat he so long honored in the Senate, that he would favor the an- 
nexation of these islands with all the-ir heterogeneous and vicious 
incumbrances? I do not. He signed the treaty, but his heart was 
not there. Secretary Sherman must also have had his reluctance 
to sign the treaty for the annexation of Hawaii a good deal stiff- 
ened by the remonstrance against it which was presented to him 
signed by 20.0U0 of the natives. 

On our part the annexation of the Plawaiian Islands is only an 
overdone example of the European colonial system. It belongs 
to and emenates from the aristocratic school of politics. It has 
no abhorrence of coolie labor, which is the double cousin of 
slavery. It covets prodigal expenditures and a big display of 
power. It does not listen to the still, small voice of peace, indus- 
try, and economy, but to the blast of the popular trumpet which 
would conquer worlds and reign over Hawaii rather than serve in 
heaven. 

My firm conviction, however, is that annexation of distant 
islands is not in harmony with the Constitution of the United 
States, but is conspicuously repugnant thereto; nor is it in har- 
mony with the history or even with any of the recorded opinions 
of our earliest and ripest statesmen. Claiming nothing in con- 
sideration of any words of mine, except for the facts here iire- 
sented, I have yet to hear any sufficient reasons which should 
induce me to break the consistency of my record of many years' 
standing against the annexation of distant foreign lands. May 
I not ask. Has the country ever lamented the rejection of Santo 
Domingo? Manifestly no. Let me hope that I may never part 
with ni}- profound reverence for the eminent state.smen who con- 
structed the Constitution of our Repiiblic, and I shall also hope 
to be i)ardoned if I shovdd not turn the pictures of the faces of 



6 

those eminent Amei'icans to the wall, and flout their memory, 
whose wisdom has guided the great achievements of onr country 
through its first century, although they, '"rich in saving common 
sense,'' flatly refused the doubtful achievement of annexing dis- 
tant foreign islands. 

The title of the i)arties now holding the dominion of the Ha- 
waiian Island^ , is based on conquest without arms, which is better 
tlian would have been a title bj' usurpation, superior to any bar- 
gain that might have been made with Liliuokalani, and must now 
be treated as a de facto G overnment. It succeeds to the power and 
estate of its predecessor, and the United States may extend, if it 
chooses, some favors to Hawaii, as was done long years ago, but 
can not afford to even seem to profit by the recent conquest. Nor 
can the United States afford to accept the validity of the title of 
the present possessors— all they have— while much of the world 
and so many Senators hold it open to suspicion and dispute, al- 
though held to be excellent by most of those who favor annexation, 
an anyhow annexation. 

It has been very ominously hinted that other nations, more am- 
bitions, are eager to take these islands in case of our declination, 
but this is squarely denied by Great Britain, and, were the island- 
ers to so consent, their ingratitude would diminish my grief were 
vre called upon to say, " Farewell, Hawaii." But Hawaii will 
never let go of even our little finger, and the ominous hint is of 
no more worth than it was when made in the case of Santo Do- 
mingo, or of St. John, or St. Thomas, or in the case of Hawaii in 
18.')4. or than any other very cheap theatrical thunder. 

No other nation can offer Hawaii an equal market for its sugar 
to that of the United States, and such a market is their great and 
abiding necessity. Hawaii has nothing, however, to give in re- 
turn or no market of the slightest importance to reciprocate. 
England could not renounce and stultify its free-trade policy by 
imposing duties on sugar, and then, in the same act of Parliament, 
provide that all sugar imported from Hawaii should be free of 
duty. Germany and France are both heavily in the sugar indus- 
try, and would be the last to nurse and coddle Hawaii in the same 
line, as that would only compel them to assume the burden we 
now bear. They may not like us, but they have been taught— 

Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot 

That it do sinsre yourself. 

The Republic of Hawaii, with "all the world before it where to 
choose," would not commit commercial suicide by the blunder of 
trying to find a better friend than the United States. No other 
nation will seek their acquisition so long as we let it be known, as 
we have done for more than fifty years, that the United States 
would regard it as an unfriendly act and would resist it. 

The personnel of the present Hawaiian Government is guided 
not only with some skill, but with sufficient " iron and blood " to 
maintain its independence as a State. I see no good reason for a 
change. Let us tell them, as we have done for over a half cen- 
tury, "We are your friend, and your independence as a State will 
have our continued favor and support." If a trinity of foreign 
powers move to combine, or to galvanize the carcass of the an- 
cient Holy Alliance, as some timid people ap])rehend, in order to 
curb the United States, the first crack of the European whip will 
be the only summons required by Americans for the crisis. Later 
let the historian record whether empires or republics in Europe 



liave been mailo stronf,'er ov wcalvor by siuli a coiiHict. It is 
known to be perilous to exposo ini]ioviai armies to i)oliti(al con- 
tagion by contact, even in war, with Kcimblitan soldiers. 

The fact, however, that we have been so loni^ held .'is the fore- 
most friend of tho Ilawaiiaiis makes it diffienlt for any of us to 
look upon tho ([uestion of their annexation with absolute .i"stico 
to the national interests of our own country. Yet that is what wo 
are hero for. 

The important qiiostion is now presented of the aecjuisition of 
this far-away territory — not contiguous, but a stragi^ling litter of 
islands of volcanic birth, which it is proposed shall somehow 
actually become an inte.i^ral part of the territory of our llepublic. 
Annexation, it should be honestly confessed, has not been so much 
sought after by the natives as by tho dominant and more astute 
aliens, who have been fully acclimated by their very tropical sugar 
dividends. 

It has been wildly asserted by an Eastern attorney that the pos- 
session of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States would in 
time of war contributo largely to the defensive strength of our 
Pacific coast. How that could bo realized, while over L*,(»00 miles 
away in the Pacific Ocean, it has not been satisfactorily explained. 
At present there are no fortifications there of the slightest impor- 
tance, and with tho most lavish expenditures the eight islands 
could never be made impregnable. Nature has not supplied them 
with the foundations of a Gibraltar, nor of a Malta, nor of even 
a Quebec. Major-General Schofield denies that even Honolulu 
can be defended by shore batteries. 

In a report to the Secretary of War May f^, 187:], he makes the 
following statement: 

Honolulu is the only good commercial harl)or in the whole grou\). There 
are many other so called harbors or places for anchorage, but they are open 
roadsteads, affording shelter only from certain winds, and they arc all en- 
tirely iiicai)able of Ix'ing defended by shore batteries. Even the harbor of 
Honolulu itself can not bo defended from the shore. 

An enemy could take up his i)osition outside of the entran<'e to the liarbor 
and command the entire anchorage, as well as the town of Honolulu itself. 
This harbor would, therefore, be of no use to us as a harbor of refuge in time 
of war. 

There is more testimony of this kind, as well as some in con- 
flict, but none of equal authortiy, as tho testimony of (Teneral 
Schofield has not become worthless by his becoming a partisan. 

But were fortifications possible at Honolulu, of what protection 
would they be to our cities and ports on the Pacific coast? In- 
stead of being any auxiliary defense, tho islands themselves would 
largely require both naval and military defense. 

Perhaps some American statesmen would regard it (piite as 
prudent to first have our numerous ports and prosperous cities on 
the Pacific and Atlantic roasts receive some defensive attention, 
and also that tho national capital, if not made invulnerable to a long 
siege, should at least be jnade safe from a twelve-hours raid up 
the Potomac by some Admiral Cockburn, and not be left so gun- 
less and unprotected as to tempt the puny aggression of second 
and third rate powers. 

The Hawaiian Islands, if annexed, would prove as barren of 
military importance as of commercial, which is wholly l)ased on 
our unfortunate grant of a frei' market for their sugar, and their 
annexation would be a source of wi-akiiess, and no more desirable 
for thedefense of the Pacilii- coast than the back side of the mooii. 



8 

As owners it would at once require on our part a large and per- 
manent naval and military force to be stationed there to main- 
tain our master)', but as an independent state the United States 
could shield Hawaii from any hostile attack by merely announc- 
inp; that we were their ally in the support of their independence. 

Beyond doubt the islands would be a considerable source of 
embarrassment and probable discomfiture by multiplying our 
vulnerable points, as Avell as by a far more exhaustive addition to 
our national expenditures. I will dismiss this branch of the sub- 
ject, and leave it to the judgment of all Senators whether these 
islands, if annexed, would not in case of war quickly be in the 
possession of the commander there of the superior naval fleet? 
But without annexation the Hawaiian Islands would not be 
threatened. Annexation would alone create the necessity of its 
preparations for war. If annexation is to be our fate, at least 
two or three of our vessels of war, including one of our best bat- 
tle ships, should be sent forthwith to Honolulu, unless we intend 
to leave the islands as an easy prize to some idle Spanish gunboat. 

The main source of Hawaiian reveniie is now from duties im- 
po36<I on imports, which after annexation would be surrendei*ed. 
By the proposed treaty the public debt of Hawaii— not to exceed 
$4,000,000— is to be paid by the United States. The admission of 
States into the Union has not often been encumbered with a con- 
dition that its public debt should be paid by the United States. 
In this case the debt is less than half the amount we shall continue 
annually to surrender by the admission of Hawaiian sugar free of 
duty. 

The details of our import and export trade with Hawaii will 
show its pitiful amount and its worse than worthless character. 
The total duties remitted by the United States while the reci- 
procity treaty has been in force amount to over $65.000.000— a big 
sum for a little trade. The total imports in 1897 were $13, 687, 787, 
of which $13,16-4,379 was sugar and only $523,408 for all other 
imports. The whole gross amount of imports from Hawaii sub- 
ject to any duty in 1897 amounted to less than $25,000. Our ex- 
ports to Hawaii are only remarkable for their slender character, 
and were, in 1897 only $4,690,075. Of course this adverse bal- 
ance of the sugar trade against us of $8,987,724 we paid some- 
where in specie to sugar-stock owners residing in Honolulu or 
elsewhere. These oppressive balances occur every year, and an- 
nexation can not diminish them. 

The annual report of the Hutchinson Company, one of the nu- 
merous prosperous sugar companies of Hawaii, sets forth the cost 
of their sugar products to have been $30 per ton. or a little less 
than 1^ cents per pound. The price quoted in our market 
for their sugar has been 3.7 cents per pound. This would leave 
the sugar producers of Hawaii a profit last year of about 
§9,000,000, or twice as much as the gross amount of all the United 
States export trade to Hawaii. If "this is not paying too dearly 
for the whistle, what is it? If any individual were guilty of such 
dull-witted incapacity, the Government would at once have a 
guardian appointed. Unfortunately, however, the Senate, it is 
claimed, is not unwilling to perpetuate forever this preposterous 
free-sugar folly by annexation, simply because it includes as bene- 
ficiaries a small number of former Americans who left their coim- 
try, settled in Honolulu, have paid taxes there, and are no longer 
American citizens. We could still give them our good will, but. 



expatriatecl as tliey chose to be. it is askinjj too mncli tbat we 
shall continue forever to support them in this most prodigal and 
extravagant style. 

If any of our people are expecting to profit by finamg or by 
creating a market in Hawaii for manufactures, they should at once 
be sent to school where Hogging has not become an obsolete 
method for the correction of the pupils. The trade of the uncul- 
tured inhabitants of tropical countries, like that of Hawaii, 
makes no figure in commerce and rarely pays more anywhere 
than the cost of its practical protection. 

The annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States 
presents a question of national policy, of constitutional power, 
and of national honor of the utmost gravity. It is not a new- 
question, but one that has been heretofore always rejected, and by 
our most eminent statesmen. The islands are not near to the 
American Continent, but far out in the middle of the Pacific 
Ocean. President Jefferson regarded the question of constitu- 
tional power to annex even the contiguous territory of Louisiana 
so doubtful as properly to require an amendment of the Constitu- 
tion, but the irresistible power of the mouths of the Mississippi 
silenced that question. 

However that may be. the Hawaiian question of annexation 
appeai-3 to have been forever negatively determined by the United 
States in 1843. as was then supposed. At that time our Secretary 
of State, Daniel Webster, announced the established policy of the 
United States in relation to the Sandwich Islands in a communi- 
cation addressed to George Brown, our commissioner to Hawaii, 
from which I take the following extract: 

We ask no control over their Government nor any undue influence what- 
ever. Our only wish is tbat the integrity and indejicndence of the Hawaiian 
territories may Ix? scrupulously maintained and tlia^ its Government should 
be entirely impartial toward foreigners of every nation. 

With this declaration from the Department of State, with 
Daniel Webster speaking for the United States, intended for all 
time, and sent to our commissioner at Honolulu, and made known 
to all the world, it might be hoped that no Senator would require 
a stronger Government pledge to induce him to maintain the good 
faith of the United States. 

Preliminary to this it is known that the ministers of Great Brit- 
ain and of France had proposed to Secretary Webster to unite in 
a treaty to bind the three powers to make and presei-ve the Ha- 
waiian Islands as an independent State. To this Mr, Webster did 
not consent, as our trade and relations, he thought, made us an 
exception to other nations: but he was entirely in accord about 
our consent to the preservation of the full and complete independ- 
ence of the islands. 

Finally the chief secretary of Great Britain and the ambassadcr 
of France completed such an agreement in London November 28, 
1843, as follows: 

Her Majesty the Queen of the United Kinpdom of Great Britain and Ira- 
land and His Majestv the King of the French, t:ikinff into consideration the 
existence in the Sandwi<h Islands of a Govornmcut capable of proyidinR for 
the regularity of its relations with foroifjn niitioits. have thoupht it ri^'lit to 
engage reciprocally to consider the Sandwich Islands iis an independent 
Stat© and never to take jios-sesfiion, either directly or under tlie title of ijro- 
tectorate.or under any other form, of any part of the territory i<f which they 
are composed. ABERDEEN. 

ST. AULAIUE. 



10 

Can anybody suppose that England and Franco would have 
bound themselves by such an agreement but for the antecedent 
pledged word and lead of the United States? How can we, tho 
foremost nation of the New World, while changing our front 
without a blush or apology about annexing Hawaii as "an inde- 
l)endent State," hope to escape the reproach of breaking our 
recorded word? 

In the summer of 1854 our commissioner to Honolulu, I\lr. 
Gregg, advised Secretary William L. Marcy that the Kingdom of 
Hawaii was on the verge of a revolution and resting on a political 
volcano; that four British ships of war and four French war 
ships had just arrived at lloncjlulu. Annexation, therefore, must 
be (juickly souglit or Hawaii would be forever lost. A treaty was 
asked for and obtained from Hawaii, but as it was to Ijo admitted 
as a State, with Senators and Represenatives, it was not swiftly 
accepted by Marcy. The King of the islands did not sign an 
amended treaty, and in a short time he died. The Prince Royal 
having ascended the throne, the political volcano disappeared, 
and so did this embryotic treaty. 

After denouncing as forbidden fruit the acquisition of the dis- 
tant islands of the sea, as we have often done, for which European 
empires are still so hungry, it appears strange that a change so 
radical should suddenly blot our past history and present us to the 
world as eager to acquire even what will be impossible for Ameri- 
cans to assimilate, what will degi'ade our republican system of 
government, and can not elevate the general political character 
of our people. 

The formal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands, under a one- 
man power, under a republic in name, or whatever form of gov- 
ernmental experiment we may choose or be compelled toi)rescribe, 
will advertise the final wreckage of the "Morn'oe doctrine,"' so 
long held dear by the American people. Self-respect will compel 
us to discard and seek a divorce from the glory of a connection 
with a historic measure to which the public opinion of mankincl 
will at once pronounce us unworthy. We can not afford to de- 
nounce and forbid all acquisitions of territory in the Western 
Hemisphere by European governments, even at the peril of war, 
and forthwith embark in a thus bedanined enterprise ourselves. 
If we would have our yet unstained doctrine i-espected by others, 
we must scrupulously practice what we preach. 

Because several of tho larger Eastern nations have been in an 
expensive and furious catch-as-catch-can naval hunt to seize ports 
and harbors, or any tidbits of the Chinese Empire, it is not a suf- 
ficient reason why the United States should suddenly blot its 
record by showing how easily we can be seduced by a like beset- 
ting sin. 

Some tears were shed in the former and confidential part of this 
debate for the reason that we, unlike European nations, had no 
colonies nov dependencies and were not alert in the seizure of 
ports and harbors of China, ostensibly to build up trade and com- 
merce, as all Europe seemed to be doing. 

Yet the monopoly of these ports and harbors, for their own ex- 
clusive benefit, appeared likely to i)rovoke the hostility of other 
commercial nations, and therefore a trio of the China reformers, 
now led by Great Britain, at once agreed to make all these ports 
as free and open to tho whole world as to themselves. The loudly 
proclaimed overwhelming necessity that the United States should 



11 

bogin to snatch by diplomacy or by force some fon'ii?ii market 
place, or annex some foreij^n islands, or at least twist the tail of 
the British lion, lias been, it now appears, overworked, and all of 
its varied pathos has tied. 

The reciprocity treaty witli the Hawaiian Islands of .Tiino 3, 
1875, was an cnormons blunder, u^reater even than that with Can- 
ada in 18*) 1, on the part ot the United States, as a brief examina- 
tion of its practical operation will conclusively show. Thus ex- 
empting their sugar from duty by comjjact we gave to those who 
wei'o unentitled to it by reciprocity or by furnishing our people 
with any cheaper sugar the power to annually intercept and take 
away from us niilHous of revenue on sugar for which no fair 
equivalent of commerce or of sentiment has ever been even pre- 
tended. To obtain more revenue wo had just imposed on sugar 
extraordinary duties, and the remission of such duties on Hawaiian 
sugar and molasses, as might have been expected, gave enormous 
profits to the sugar planters and greatly augmented the Hawaiian 
production of sugar. Much of the most valuable sugar lands 
there were immediately largely monopolized, sugar machinery 
was swiftly and annually imported, and many thousand cooly 
laborers from China and Japan were suddenly brought and jiut 
at work in Hawaii at the cooly rate of wages. 

In 1870 our imports of free sugar from Hawaii were only 20,000,- 
000 pounds, but in 189Giucreased to 443,000,000 pounds. The treaty 
ought long ago to have been terminated or reasonably modified, so 
as to have remitted not more than 10 or 20 per cent of the duties on 
sugar, or no more than we may properly remit on the sugar of 
Brazil or of Germany, where our trade would reciuire and receive 
some reciprocal advantages in retiarn. Some interested parties in 
Hawaii might regret a collapse in their present enormous advan- 
tages, but our people would not regret tohave this unreciprocated 
and quixotic boon no longer so extravagantly maintained at their 
cost. 

The people of the United States being the largest consumers in 
the world of sugar per capita, as well as in the aggregate, the 
great economy of its home production has by them long been 
anxiously desired. Its production by the cheapest foreign labor- 
ers and foreign o\\Tiers, 2,100 miles away from our shores, and ad- 
mitted here free of duty, is now a loss of millions per annum of 
reveniie, and enriches only a very limited monopoly in Hawaii. 
But many people of our States, our own kith and kin, would 
gladly risk their labor and their capital to establish the sugar-beet 
culture on their own Western continental homes, and thus we 
might escape an annual drain to which we have been long sub- 
jected to the amount of nearly $100,000,000 to pay for our un- 
equaled sugar consumption. Our homo producers of sugar do 
not want to be confronted forever with the competition of free 
sugar produced by cooly labor which no American can afford to 
tolerate, much less to i)rotect, as we are doing and as it is now 
proposed we shall do forever. Uur election of lyiiG was not won 
on a pledge of protection to the sugar production of Hawaii. 

The terrible curse of the Haw.iiian Islands appears to be incur- 
able leprosy, which is communicable by the jiresence of the leper, 
biit how or in what manner science has furnished no answer, 
although kissing has been ascertained to be a i)erilous oxi)osure. 
There is no disease to whicli any portion of the human race has 
ever been afflicted more to be dreaded than leprosy. Its hatet'ui, 
W2 



12 

loathsome, and contagious features have from the earliest ages 
stamped its presence with horror. Dr. Morrow has presented a 
learned and interesting statement of the subject as it now exists 
in Hawaii, where the residents of no nationality have entirely es- 
caped from the disease, and which he rightly thinks ought not to 
be kept out of sight should the annexation of the islands ever be 
seriously contemplated. It has been attempted to suppress the 
disease by segregation of the lepers at Molokai so long as they 
live, usually from three to five years, but the number of cases for 
ten years past, it is claimed, has increased. The expenses for 
Louses, clothing, and food is borne by the Government. The con- 
stant decrease of the native population indicates their early exter- 
mination. Dr. Morrow also reports that in addition to the 1,2U0 
now segregated at Molokai there are probably two or three times 
as many at large in whom the disease is latent. Each of these 
carries with him the seeds of a deadly contagion, and '-in the 
event of annexation," the Doctor says, "it would be idle to think 
of confining leprosy to the islands, or rather of excluding it from 
this country by quarantine measures."' No; wecanonly take them, 
if we take them at all, in sickness and in health, for better and for 
worse. Any closer connection should not be coveted by us than 
that we now have. The incomputable incumbrances are there to 
stay forever. Hawaii once annexed, a divorce woiild be impos- 
BiV)le. Our only security is now to solemnly forbid the bans. 

How unfortunate are we that the wonderful value and prodi- 
gious importance, military and sentimental, of the Hawaiian 
Islands had not been discovered earlier, and their annexation 
pushed prior to our distinct pledge in favor of their '-independence 
as a state "and before we had rejected these and all other like 
distant islands, and bj' rather grandly proposing instead to estab- 
lish the "Monroe doctrine," which we now find more difficult to 
practice ourselves than it has been to impose iipou Europe. 
Surely Hawaiian annexation would have been less repugnant, less 
unfortunate, had it been proposed before leprosy had destroyed so 
large a part of the native population, and especially before the 
islands had been invaded and so heavily stocked with the Chinese 
and Japanese contract laborers. Certainly, could these incurable 
grievances now be removed, the objections to annexation would 
be less conspicuous, but still formidable, as even then the islands 
as American dependencies would have had no temptation to the 
statesmen of the eras of Washington, nor of Jackson or Lincoln. 

Less than 3 per cent of the present number of inhabitants in 
Hawaii are of Americaia origin— not enough to dominate or to 
boss the 07 i)er cent of the other nationalities, which could not 
•without too great risk be trusted to self-government, nor even to 
loyalty to the United States, yet they expect soon, whatever may 
be the terms of annexation, that they will be full-fledged citizens 
of an integi'al part of the t^^nion. entitled to share in governing the 
United States in both Houses of Congress. To this I am irrevo- 
cably opposed. 

An examination of the basis of any possible free government in 
Hawaii, with inhabitants of so many different languagts, religions, 
habits, and traditions, mostly monarchists, presents no encoiirage- 
ment for the creation or permanence of a republican form of gov- 
ernment, to which nine out of every ten are theoretically as well 
as jn-actically opposed. Theobjections apparent there to suffrage, 
whether free or limited, seem insuperable. To confine suffrage to 
347:.' 



13 

tbo 0.080 Am(-ric-:nis nlon-', iiichnliiifj men, woinon. and cliiltli-ii, 
would hardly he snbmitt.-d to, vxcrpt at tlu' jxiint of the hay..: .t. 
If the DiUivos were allowed tu vote, repiosriitin;? :{'.>. .'rt> I (itu-linlmj^ 
lialf-castes and lepersMiiey luiKht restore the deposed yuitii. and 
it would he (ineer to treat thf natives as no lonK'tr oiti/.ons Imt 
savages after we Iiavo been their HeluMilnm-^ters and misaionarii'ti 
so many years. What the ,Tapane8»\» numlx'rinj? •.'.'». I07. with 
their rights by treaty, would do if allowed ti> vote we ran . nlv 
guess that tliey would aiitagoni/e thi«("lnnese, whonnnjlK-r Jl ' . 
And there are lo.j'.tl of tho nnreckoned I'ortngne'ie. C.rt.nhly 
none of these eonld ever be safely coTintrd in favor of leaving tii.i 
'•paramount " authority in the "hands of the I'nited Stat< s, and 
an army of .sufficient strength, with the Stars and Stripes, would 
therefore be a permanent necessity to !-bield the islands from in- 
surrections and revolutions. 

It has been erroneously suggested by a Boston visitor, if the 
Hawaiian Islands were to be annexed, that a largo multitndo of 
United States immigrants would lioclc there for settlement. This, 
to me, seems most improbable. There will be few or no vacam-ies 
io be filled by newcomers of any sort. We have no American la- 
borers who could witlistand the troiiical climato or be tempted 
from home by the average wages now paid in Hawaii. The small 
trades and professions are aaiil now to he overer.iwded. The out- 
door laboring men there now are exclusively Chinese, Japanese. 
Portuguese, or natives, and equal in numbers to any j.rt sent or 
probable future demands. The hot sun and low wages are likely 
to exclude all others. It would be doubtful whether there couUl 
be even a platoon of colored laborers recruited f(jr Hawaiian wages 
in America. OflBcial positions doubtless have been, so to say, aile- 
quately promised to ximericans who understand the language 
made for the natives. The Chinese, Japanese, and Portugtieae 
were brought there by the shipload, and there they are likely to 
remain forever. 

Tho best of the STigar lands in the valleys and on the sides of tho 
mountains have been monopolized, and after the Spreckels. all 
other speculators will be gleaners in fields alreaily largely reaped. 
A considerable amount, however, of sugar lands, only less profit- 
able, can of course be brought into cultivation. Finally, there 
are no lands outside of the United States, however bles-sed the cli- 
mate or however prosperous, even with more industries than one, 
or however advanced in science and general education or worthy 
in moral purity, which have ever tempted the American people 
to emigrate. More than half of our States might have their pop- 
ulation quadrupled and suffer nothing from density. We are 
most unlikely to furnish any country— certainly not Hawaii— 
with any considerable number of immigrants for a hun<lred years 
to come. The only tracks made on our borders are all inward 
and none outward. Foreign emigrants have come ami will como 
to us in abundant streams from all quarters of the globe, and each 
one will soon be heard repeating the words of a jiroud and native- 
born American: "Thank God! I— 1 also— am an American." 

One gentleman in this debate rests his argument for anne.xation 
on his belief that the Chinese and Japaneso will ho at onc-e driven 
out of Hawaii by Americans and expatriated. All history will 
show that this is impossible. The few Americans there now could 

* Largely increased .since 1800. 
3472 



14 

not tlo without their hibor. No race is ever supplanted except by 
a hardier one— one that c:ui endure more hours nf labor and be 
content with c-heaper and coarser food. The British troops took 
Quebec, but the Canadian Frenchmen remained in Canada. They 
are there now. and so is their language. We have had colonization 
societies for generations, and expended large sums of money m 
sending away colored immigrants, but wholly without success, 
because their labor is indispensable here, and it can not be super- 
seded by more acceptable labor. Even the Romans sometmies 
yielded to the Goths. A small number of the Chinese and Japanese 
may return to their former homes, but their places will be filled 
bv lar"-er numbers of these most industrious and hardy workers. 
"The^Turks got possession of Thessaly. the largest division of 
ancient Greece, in the fourteenth century; but Greece, though 
often favored bv other powers, has not recovered the largest and 
most fertile division of her ancient possessions. Nor will the 
Asiatics be expelled from Hawaii. ^ ■ ■ , 

In addition to the American residents, there are 2,2.j0 British 
and 1,432 German. Most of these respectable people went there 
only to seek better professional support as ministers, lawyers, 
physicians, merchants, or as speculators in sugar and real estate. 
The numbers there now competing in all these learned and skilled 
professions and in trade are reported to largely overlap and exceed 
what can be sumptuously supported as all want to be by their 
tributary patrons. Annexation would make a little additional 
room for a few low-priced, sedentary officials, but might also 
add something to the present excessive competition of this hungry 

If ever they come under our flag and Constitution their diverse 
population must be subject to our laws as now recorded, and they 
are not as flexible as some political platforms, and could not mean 
one thing in Hawaii and another in California. The provisions 
relating to citizenship, aliens, suffrage, and homesteads, with all 
the privileges and penalties in their application, would be likely 
to get badly tangled. If the islands are ever in the Union as a 
Territory, then it should be remembered that thin partitions divide 
Territories or even dependencies from States; and any party num- 
bering one more than half in each House of Congress may admit 
by resolution these unfortunately leprous islands as a State, with 
eiiual power in the Senate of the oldest States of the Union. It 
would require six months for our most learned committee to 
frame and fit proper laws to hold the Hawaiian infant territory, 
and yet we have not even a cradle ready for this expected addition 
to our American family. 

It has also been urged that a harbor and coaling station would 
bo a great convenieme to our commerce across the Pacific Ocean. 
How great that would be, however, can be better estimated by 
those who know that the Hawaiian Islands lie 18 degrees south 
and 2,100 miles distant from San Francisco. We now have such 
a harbor under an irrevocable grant. It is not probable that any 
harbor would ever be denied to us in time of peace; and in case 
of war the strongest naval power would keep or take whatever it 
chose to have. Pearl Harbor could be made of immediate use at 
a very inconsiderable expense by the removal of a coral reef which 
now obstructs its entrance. 

The American whaling fleet, which formerly was in the habit of 
calling at Honolulu for supplies and repairs, is now but little 
more than a memory of the past. In INTO the number was seventy- 



15 

one. and in ISO.") only six of .such ve3.scls were seen at Honolulu, 
and in 1800 only two. Under our llajj wo liavo more than ouc- 
half of tlu'ir trado, and several forei;,'n llaij.s, ineludi!»« the sub- 
sidized British, obtain tho reniaimler. But tho whole iniiH)rt 
trade is iusi,i:uificant. as I have already shown, and the consuuip- 
tion of American nianufaetiiros by natives or resident.s of Hawaii 
will never make it otherwi.se. Their earnin,u:s are too restricted, 
combined with Asiatic habits, to create valuable consumers. No 
country is likely to add much to the value ol domestic or to foni^rn 
trade where the native women ;j:o barefoot, eat fish raw. and strivo 
to witch the world on horseback with each foot in a Ktirrui>. 

It has been the hapi>iness of tho Kepublic of the United States 
that it has long and very distinctly had the benefit of a contrast 
with aristocratic empires and monarcliies in relation to colonial 
dependencies. These arrogant aristocracies nurse tlieir pride and 
dazzle their sub.iects with the obedience and enchantments of dis- 
tant colonies and dependencies, bnt their condition is now. or wa.s 
recently, on exhibition by their paternal and maternal w.irs and 
rumors of wars in India. North and Soiith Africa, ^ladagas.ar, 
Egypt, China, Philippine Islands, and Cuba. 

These perennial colonial flagellations, or life .straggles of colo- 
nies and dependencies which refuse to stay con(iuered,re(inire tlie 
increase of big home armies and bigger navies, which can only bo 
maintained by the biggest taxes, Tlie aristocratic ein])ires ])usli 
the inexorable demand of three to five j-ears of the life of all their 
young men in military service, and then to be ready for further 
service until emancipated by the decrejjitude of old age. The.se 
large standing armies threaten their neighbors, and tlieir neigh- 
bors threaten everybody else by an increase of their battle ships. 
Boundless public debts and double and twisted taxes leave their 
people poor, with no hope that these grim and stubborn exactions 
will ever be less. 

Hitherto the statesmen of our Republic have kept clear of colo- 
nies and dependencies, for it need not be admitted that Alaska is 
an exception, nor that it is ever more likely to become one of tho 
United States than any other part of the yet unappropriated 
North Pole. Our young men of the Republic are at scliool, or at 
work on the farm, or busy somewhere learning a trado or a i)r()- 
fession from which they may derive a livelihood or the comforts 
of an independent home. They are not impressed for the Regu- 
lar Army, which is so small as to be almost invisible, and wholly 
composed of volunteers. Two-thirds of our rebellion debt has 
been paid, and we fully expect to pay the remainder, and that it 
will speedily grow less. 

The historic policy of the Republic of tho United States for the 
hundred years just piv^sed, based as it has been upon tho sound 
doctrine promulgated by Washington in his Farewell Address 
with words of perennial wisdom against foreign entangling alli- 
ances, has taken root in tho hearts of the American people, where 
it is treasured up as their political Bible and can not now bo 
" mocked at " as merely an ancient tradition. Its accei)tanco has 
made the nation great, made it respected. If our fidelity to tho 
well-ripened statesmanship of tlio Father of his Country shall bo 
perpetuated for the next hundred years as in the past, the honor, 
prosperity, and power of our Republic, it may safely be predicted, 
will light and lead all the nations. 

3t73 



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